Kinohi Roams

New York Shutterbug II: Museumification

2007-12-19T09:58:00.001-08:00

Thursday
MoMA

Thing theory
[Marcel Duchamp, In Advance of the Broken Arm, 1964 {1915}; Network of Stoppages, 1914; Bicycle Wheel, 1951 {1913}]

Across the street is Terry Gilliam's Brazil

Uplift
[Martin Puryear, Ladder for Booker T. Washington, 1996; Desire, 1981; Ad Astra, 2007]

S/M cool
[Claes Oldenburg, Giant Soft Fan, 1966-67]

Beauty mark
[Andy Warhol, Gold Marilyn Monroe, 1962]

Friday
TGIF

A feather by the urinal in the National Museum of the American Indian

New York Shutterbug

2007-12-18T14:17:00.000-08:00

What do you do when you're in New York City for a week and have to be out of the house by 8am and back after 8pm each day? You become a tourist. I became a New York City tourist for the first time when I visited my friend Lissu in October. My trip coincided with a busy work week at the UN, which meant that I was left to fend for myself on the streets of Brooklyn and Manhattan for 14 to 16 hours, Monday through Friday.

I've traveled to New York regularly since 1996, when I spent a month in a pre-college program at Barnard and felt like Manhattan was a teeming urban playground for a high school "rebel." I remember smoking cigarettes out on the dorm patio, sneaking into bars with my city friends, watching salacious videos at my friend Blake's apartment, and going to see Trainspotting in theaters three times. Then there was the sampling of goods at Washington Square Park, which saw our group of three giggle uncontrollably either because we were high or because we thought that's what we should be doing. I even tried my hand at DJing for Barnard's college radio station. It was a pretty awesome summer; by the end of it, I flew back to Hawaii with a suitcase overflowing with books from the Strand and CDs from shops in the Village.

In the decade since my first trip to New York, I've been back countless times to visit friends and their families. With the exception of an eighteenth-century studies conference at CUNY in my second year of graduate school, I went to the city to hang out with people who effectively grew up in and around New York. Whenever I hung out with these people, we tended to avoid the obvious "touristy" activities.

Not so this time around. What follows is a glimpse into the world of "sights" and "attractions" I discovered on my recent trip to New York. I walked the city streets alone, laptop on my back, hopped up on coffee (from the essential Think Cafe -- thanks, Bettina!), and with iPod nestled in my pocket. I did not make it to Washington Square.

Monday
Consider, you who peruse me, whether I may not in unknown ways be looking upon you; / Be firm, rail over the river, to support those who lean idly, yet haste with the hasting current...

The view from Brooklyn's Esplanade, facing Manhattan

I sat here for a good two hours, watching the sun set

And the sun did set on Whitman's Brooklyn Bridge

Tuesday
Birth of a Nation?

Allegoresis: dark skies over the Statue of Liberty

Photo-synthesis: suits with a view

Isle of Ellis: way station for immigrants

Catachresis: a piece of the World Trade Center finds its way to Battery Park

Wednesday
Harlem U.S.A.

The black press

It's showtime

Adam Clayton Powell stands watch

Gutted...

...and reborn as a movie set

Sylvia's taste of the South: ribs, mac 'n cheese, candied yams, cornbread

Crossings

I too lived--Brooklyn, of ample hills, was mine;
I too walk’d the streets of Manhattan Island, and bathed in the waters around it;
I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me,
In the day, among crowds of people, sometimes they came upon me,
In my walks home late at night, or as I lay in my bed, they came upon me.

I'm a 'Baller

2007-12-09T01:59:00.000-08:00

Footballer. I'm a footballer. Or at least that's the dream I'm pursuing in signing up with an intramural indoor soccer team here at Duke. I responded to a mass e-mail calling for people who'd like to join a squad that needed players. Even though I haven't played soccer regularly for years, I knew this league was just for fun and recreation and so had nothing to lose in taking the plunge.

Our captain, Michael Albert, is a guy from the Business School. Our team consists of men and women from all over the graduate and professional schools and even includes a few undergrads. Because we were sort of thrown together at the last minute, Michael gave us a team name befitting our ragtag grouping: Identity Crisis.

I've written before about my abiding love for the game, especially as its played in the English Premier League. Even without cable since coming back from Peru, I continue to follow all the fixtures online and to obsessively track players' progress through my online Fantasy Football game. Well, the rec league at Duke has given me my first real opportunity to combine my fandom and vicarious knowledge of the game with sustained physical activity -- actually getting out there on the pitch and playing some football.

Not a very physical player the last time I put on the cleats and shinguards, I was a flatfooted defender in the years I played soccer as a kid. Since then, I spent several years as a competitive swimmer and water polo player, struggled through surgery in high school and college, took up tennis and racquetball, and, most recently, turned to long-distance running. Overall, I became more of a physical presence in my sporting pursuits, strengthening leg muscles through individual activities (swimming, running) and developing a sense of movement, strategy, and team-play in the other sports. While most of my footballing tactics will be derived less from experience and more from electronic observation (Fox Soccer Channel, 4thegame.com, YouTube footballing highlights, the aforementioned Fantasy game), I'm ready for the challenge of indoor soccer.

As I prepare to take to the field (or the IM gym's floor, as it were), I hope to mold my play in the style of my footballing hero, the Basque Spaniard and Liverpool midfielder Xabi Alonso. Known as a "deep-lying midfielder," Alonso is not a holding or purely defensive midfielder per se (such as Chelsea's Claude Makelele or Milan's Gennaro Gattuso) but a playmaker who creates space for himself -- and thus his passes and long-range shots -- just behind the attacking midfielder (in Alonso's club, this would be the legendary Steven Gerrard). Milan's World Cup champion Andrea Pirlo is perhaps the world's best-known deep-lying playmaker. Other notables include Barcelona's Xavi and Roma's Daniele De Rossi.

The deep-lying midfielder is not a standout defender. He's an offensive threat who distributes passes from the defense up to the attacking midfielder and, of course, the striker(s). In addition to being an amazing passer, he'll try his luck with long-range shots and will, on occasion, venture into the penalty area to follow up on scoring plays (or, alternately, defensive mistakes by the opposition). You can see the range of Alonso's skills, typical of the deep-lying midfielder, in this video:

Having said that, I'm probably overstating my case when I say I think I can play this position in our rec league. For one, I lack the basic, day-in-day-out skills of a regular football player. And there's no doubt the deep-lying midfielder must possess a high degree of technical skill in order to be effective at his position. Furthermore, though I consider myself to be a decent passer of the ball, I'll have absolutely zero experience playing with my team before our first match. This is a bad omen, I know, but what can you do when the league starts during finals week? Finally, it's worth noting that indoor soccer takes place in a relatively small, enclosed space (where side walls are inbounds); the deep-lying midfielder works best when there's more space available and when his vision can open up defenses and pick out the free player. Indoor soccer simply doesn't allow for that degree of open play.

Enough fantasy strategizing for now. But on to a related topic about fandom and identification. It has occurred to me that even though Alonso is my idol, when I do take to the gym floor in my blue Target-bought kit, I'll bear a resemblance not to him but to some other Premier League footballers with whom I share certain features. Phenotypically, I may have more in common with Eintracht Frankfurt's Naohiro Takahara or Tottenham Hotspurs' Lee Young-Pyo. I don't recognize myself in them, however. Something about my mixed ethnic heritage makes me look more like:

Arsenal's talented left back, Frenchman Gael Clichy

Manchester United's sidelined defender Mikael Silvestre, another Frenchman

Former Villain and current Bolton sub Gavin McCann (a holding midfielder)

Theo Walcott, Arsenal's young forward and one player on whom England is hinging its hopes of national football revival (after crashing out of Euro 2008)

Bolton's substitute goalkeeper, Ali Al Habsi, from Oman

Liverpool's stalwart shot-stopper Jose Reina

And yet another goalie, and perhaps the closest thing I have to a doppelgänger in the Premier League, Everton's and the US national team's Tim Howard

Vote for your favorite candidate for my lookalike, or tell me I'm crazy with all of my choices. I'm an aging athlete, I know, and some of these lads are in the prime of their careers. But I figure it's never too late to start.

Nishikawas in History

2007-09-18T09:49:00.000-07:00

My friend Exequiel "Che" Lopresti recently e-mailed me with this "fun fact": "Did you know that the biggest Japanese 'Ace' of WW2 (you know, top-gun fighter pilot) last name was Nishikawa?" I had not known this -- in fact, I know very little of my Japanese ancestry. I'm a sansei, or third-generation Japanese American. Though most sansei are close enough in age to their grandparents (issei) to retrieve knowledge about Japan and their family from them, mine passed away long before I was born (my father, a nisei, was born, in Honolulu, in 1927). So, I was left asking, Who was this pilot Nishikawa? Where was he from? Did he, in a fateful moment of irony, participate in the Pearl Harbor attack? Where does his body lie now? And how did my Argentine friend Exequiel hear about him?

I of course sought answers to all these questions on Wikipedia.com -- my first source of all information, broad and obscure. Without any first name to go by, I simply typed "Nishikawa" into the Search panel. I came up with the following "hits," the great Nishikawas in history:

Takanori Nishikawa (b. 1970), Japanese singer and actor. He performs as T.M.Revolution, or TMR, which is supposed to stand for "Takanori Makes Revolution." Takanori is a major figure in J-pop, or electronic-syrupy-teenage-love-style Japanese pop. Here's what he looks like:

Are those hints of Liberace I see on his poofed-out shirt? Maybe it's more Maxwell Demon from Velvet Goldmine. At any rate, there's Takanori for you, in all his glittering glory.

Heren Nishikawa (b. 1946), Japanese actress and TV celebrity. I can't make heads or tails of the English-language Wikipedia entry on Heren, so I'll quote liberally from the entry, as of today's date:

"Though the American runs in her blood, Heren has no native English."

"She is well-known as the wife of Kiyoshi Nishikawa, one of the splendid entertainer of owarai and manzai." [Oddly, there's no English-language entry on Kiyoshi.]

"Heren was born in Kyoto on the 6th October, 1946. She hasn't revealed her father yet, and after the marriage, she is referring her first name was derived from Helen Keller, her father admired."

"In 1963, Heren's stage debut as a dancer in Yoshimoto Kogyo was held. Her purity and eagerness was beloved and immediately became one of the leading actresses in Yoshimoto New Comedy with the stage name "Heren Sugimoto.'"

"In Japan we have the tendency to regard women with her child and without her child as different social status. Heren still has the actorship or presentership on the TV program mainly oriented to housewives or aged girls." [In these last two quotations, "purity" and "oriented" were actually hyperlinked in the original.]

Given the pluck and circumstance narrative of her rise to fame, her unusual namesake backstory, and her current appeal to "housewives or aged girls," I'm thinking Heren is Japan's answer to Oprah Winfrey. Any help here?

Lane Nishikawa (b. ?), American actor, filmmaker, playwright, performance artist -- and fellow native of O'ahu, Hawaii, to boot. Here's a still of Lane from his most recent, award-winning independent film, Only the Brave:

Most of Lane's work focuses on Asian American history, culture, and identity. Only the Brave is the third movie in a trilogy about "the unparalleled courage of the Nisei soldiers who voluntarily fought in World War II while many of their families were imprisoned in internment camps back in the States."

This guy seems really interesting. He grew up in San Francisco, attended at San Francisco State, and created his own degree in interdisciplinary studies to reflect his interests in theater, Asian American history, and political activism. He's even an accomplished poet who once performed in front of 3,000 inmates in San Quentin. A distant uncle, perhaps? I should look him up the next time I'm in the Bay Area.

Nishikawa Sukenobu (1671-1750), "often called simply 'Sukenobu,' was a Japanese printmaker from Kyoto. He was unusual for a ukiyo-e in being based in the imperial capital of Kyoto. He did prints of actors, but gained note for his works concerning women. His Hyakunin joro shinasadame (Appreciating 100 women), in two volumes published in 1723, depicted women of all classes, from the empress to prostitutes, and received favorable results." Here's one of Sukenobu's beautiful prints, titled The Doll Ceremony:

I have to say I'm drawn to Sukenobu's decision to represent women of all classes in his print series. What lies behind his fascination with the courtly and the "base"? Styles of dress and spaces of intimacy? The differential hierarchy of social strata, on the one hand, and the gestural equivalence of feminine form on the other?

*****

After all was said and done, I didn't end up finding the elusive fighter pilot "Nishikawa" on Wikipedia. Perhaps he hasn't made it onto the English-language site yet. Maybe Exequiel encountered a typo in a historical footnote.

Whatever the case may be, I'd like to think Exequiel had it wrong -- that Nishikawas tend to be lovers, not fighters; artists and dreamers rather than kamikaze pilots. That's the genealogy I'm hoping to inhabit myself.

[For the late Itsuko "Sue" Nishikawa, benefactor, church leader, and infinitely generous soul. She was my aunt by marriage and is fondly remembered.]

Welcome Aboard

2007-09-05T18:07:00.000-07:00

My US summer started off promisingly with a trip to the beach. My friend Kristin invited me to join her roommate Jess, Jess's partner Sean, and a bunch of their ecology friends for a week-long stay at a beach house on the North Carolina coast. This was at the beginning of June. As I had just moved back into my apartment on June 1, I thought I'd go to the beach for a couple of days instead of the whole week, reserving some time to get unpacked, reacquaint myself with my cat, and so on. Fortunately, two other beachgoers, the lovely Spaniards Ester and Lisa, happened to want to go for just a couple of nights as well.

The three of us left Durham on a sunny Wednesday afternoon in Ester's car. Our trip to Oak Island was largely uneventful up to the point where we arrived in Wilmington, the major city on North Carolina's coast. Now Ester had printed out MapQuest directions to the address of the beach house -- something to the effect of 1010 Main St. But when we arrived on the island and drove along the coast on Main St., we couldn't for the life of us find the beach house. We drove to the end of the island, into a gated neighborhood whose gate was up and whose attendant was missing. We asked some folks if they knew where our house was -- they could only guess that it lay back at the entrance to the island.

After half an hour of fruitless searching, Lisa finally got a hold of Sean on her cell phone. It quickly became apparent that we were in fact on the wrong island. MapQuest had taken us to Holden Island, not Oak Island -- though, to be fair, both islands' primary roads sport the name "Main St." We were about an hour's south of Oak Island, so Ester, Lisa, and I shared a laugh over the confusion and joyfully made our way to the correct Main St.

That early snafu was the only snafu any of us encountered during our stay at the beach house, named "Welcome Aboard." The weekend experience was, in a word, bliss. Upon finally arriving at Oak Island, our group enjoyed a hearty seafood stew for dinner and, drunk on red wine and laughter, retired to the living room to watch the shark episode of the BBC's amazing Blue Planet series (ah, ecologists!). Kristin, Ester, and I stayed up late into the night drinking and sharing stories about recent turns in our life.

The next day I stumbled out of bed and onto the beach -- literally. Welcome Aboard was situated right on the shore, and it only took a jaunt down some stairs to feel the sand beneath one's toes. Our group spent the day alternating between chatting, sunbathing, and swimming in the pleasantly chilly Atlantic currents. This is a great shoreline photo of Ester, Lisa, and Jess (looking pensive, as always) in the background:

There was something so natural to our leisurely activity as a beach group. Some would go in the water while others stayed on shore. Some would retire to the house for a siesta while others took their naps under the shade of the umbrellas. Some kissed in the water and others walked along the shore. We were friends, old and new, and our movements and conversations were relaxed and sincere.

When the final bunch of beachgoers arrived Thursday afternoon, we took to the sand-pitch and played a lively game of soccer. It was the Red Team versus... er, the Red Team. Hey, at least I got to wear my brand new Liverpool #14 Xabi Alonso jersey, which I got in Lima. Yeah, yeah, it was hot, but at what other time could I imitate my favorite soccer player's moves?

Faint though my figure may be, I'm making a trademark Alonso pass to Ben Best here. Note that he doesn't even need to break his stride to receive the feed. Fernando and Ted are positioned in ultra-safe, Chelsea-type defense, but I'll grant that, especially in this next photo, they look good in their red trunks.

Toward the end of the day, when everyone was cleaning up and preparing for dinner, I brought out my camera and took some photos of our house...

...and of the beautiful sunset-shadowed shoreline.

We again ate well that night: everyone pitched in and contributed to a meal that included grilled tuna, cooked vegetables, and delicious hogfish filets that just melted in your mouth. Here's a photo of Fernando and me playing sous chefs to the master himself, Sean McMahon:

We spent the next day, Friday, in much the same fashion as we spent Thursday. This time, instead of soccer, we played surf basketball, whereby Kristin held a floating basket steady while two teams tried to stuff a squishy ball into it. Andre's team benefited from his height, but the waves themselves were the great equalizers, often leveling a player who had thought he was standing on steady ground. For our intense waterlogged workout, our group was rewarded with another memorable seafood dinner, this time featuring Spanish-style shrimp prepared by Lisa and me.

By the time Saturday rolled around, those of us who had arrived late in the week rued not having more time to spend at Welcome Aboard. We were all at peace with ourselves, and in tune with each other, even after only having spent a few days together. The one positive twist to our leaving was the fact that we didn't need to clean the house from top to bottom -- a basic maid service was included in the rental fee.

On my way out of Welcome Aboard, with bags and boxes of leftovers and appliances in tow, I glanced at the rental information sheet that was affixed to the refrigerator by magnet. The sheet listed phone contacts and instructions for how to properly close the refrigerator door. But in naming the actual house in which we were staying, the sheet (accidentally) read "Welcome Abroad" rather than "Welcome Aboard." The typo was fitting, I thought, given that my experience there made me feel as though I had, for one weekend, escaped from reality and retreated to a paradise of communal living on the beach.

One Night at Mochileros

2007-09-05T11:24:00.000-07:00

The eight months of summer I've enjoyed between South America and the United States came to a screeching halt yesterday. All the stress and anxiety of "being back in school" (even though I'm not taking classes, I feel the weight of academic work -- i.e., my dissertation -- pressing down on me, flooding my conscience) came to a head in a situation that left me wondering, How'd things go so sour so quickly? The signature line of G.O.B. (from my latest TV obsession, Arrested Development) rang all too true for me: "I've made a huge mistake."

Whether or not yesterday's situation could have been avoided, one thing is clear: I feel old habits creeping up on me. Or, more precisely, I'm losing touch with the self I became while living abroad and traveling around in South America. Which is why I'm taking this opportunity to remind myself of the great joy I experienced there and to imagine how I might continue to live a happy, fulfilling life based on friendship and openness.

What better way to bring this experience back to the fore than to present scenes from a bar in Lima? The night was May 11, and I joined Jorge, Tammy, Emily, Angela, and others on a wild bar-hopping trip around Barranco. Most of these photos were taken at Mochileros, a trendy bar housed in a quaint colonial-type building just off the main square. Jorge and Tammy knew the owner of Mochileros, which meant that we got a free drink or three thrown into the mix. All photos are courtesy of Emily Jump and her awesome travel blog survey of the universe.

Things got started at Juanito's, where Barranco's most recognizable roaming guitarist serenaded Angela with a little ditty. I forget the specific lyrics of his riff on a famous love song, but I do remember Jorge's chorus: "Por atras."

Jorge: writer, philosopher, drunk.

Don't worry, folks: Angela and Emily are only playing innocent.

Longtime compañeros: Jorge and Tammy doin' the dance once more.

I may have wished for another bottle of Cristal.

Jorge to himself: "Emily's got issues."

Sandra thinking, What have I done to deserve this?

An unforgettable tableau: Kinohi singing, Emily growling, and Jorge wondering, Who the fuck are these people?

Not a camera effect: by the end of the night, we were all seeing blurry. Only the next shot of pisco showed up clearly.

Bad Taste?

2007-08-27T12:13:00.000-07:00

Dan Collyns from the BBC reports on a Peruvian measure to thank international aid sources for their help in the relief effort following the 7.9 earthquake. As you can read below, the name given the specially made pisco has caused quite a stir.

The bottles were labelled with the magnitude of the quake

A Peruvian initiative to thank countries and international agencies for aid it received in last week's devastating earthquake has turned sour.

One thousand specially produced bottles of Peru's famous alcoholic drink, Pisco, have had to be withdrawn amid claims of bad taste.

The bottles were labelled "Pisco 7.9", the magnitude of the earthquake which killed about 500 people.

The city of Pisco, which bears the name of the drink, was especially hard hit.

But adding to the label the numbers 7.9 - the magnitude of the earthquake according to Peru's Geophysical Institute - has left a nasty aftertaste.

The public outrage and media criticism prompted the withdrawal of the bottles.

Even the Peruvian Prime Minister, Jorge del Castillo, said the bottles' title was in poor taste but emphasised that it had been a private venture.

However the Production Minister, Rafael Rey, was behind its promotion.

Following the torrent of press and public criticism, Mr Rey said it had never been his intention to make fun of Pisco.

Still in need

Nevertheless the labelling of the bottle has been seen as a monumental faux pas.

Three-quarters of the city centre of Pisco, nearest to the epicentre of last week's earthquake, was destroyed and some 300 people killed.

Pisco, the drink, is made throughout the grape-growing regions of Peru and Chile, both of which consider it their national drink.

But the existence of a city called Pisco is seen by Peruvians as proof that the drink originally came from Peru.

Meanwhile the opposition has questioned why the government is wasting resources on producing special edition pisco when some victims of the earthquake have still not received aid.

Some aid agencies say rural communities just 50km (31 miles) outside Pisco are still waiting for blankets and food more than a week after the earthquake struck.

Vamos al Perú!

2007-07-28T12:18:00.000-07:00

What better way to celebrate Machu Picchu becoming one of the new seven wonders of the world than by visiting Perú, land of the Inkas?

I'll Show You My Exchange Rate If You Show Me Yours

2007-07-24T21:42:00.000-07:00

Here's a fine article from Slate.com on the economic implications of a weak U.S. dollar. Its author, Daniel Gross, points out that a weak U.S. dollar has meant an increase in tourists who visit the States to take advantage of comparatively cheap (with regard to other developed countries) goods, services, and investments (including real estate). Gross writes, "The money tourists spend helps put a dent in our chronic trade deficit. So do exports, which, thanks in part to the weak dollar, soared 11 percent between May 2006 and May 2007. For the first five months of 2007, the trade deficit actually fell 7 percent from 2006."

Gross also reminds us the weak dollar has benefited those U.S. corporations that rely heavily on foreign sales:

If you—or your mutual fund—own shares in large American corporations, you're a winner in the weak-dollar sweepstakes. Based on data culled from 238 constituents of the Standard & Poor's 500 Index, S&P analyst Howard Silverblatt concludes that the typical member of the index garnered 44.2 percent of its sales outside [emphasis mine] the United States in 2006. Translating cash received from those sales into weaker dollars puts some fizz into earnings. Last week Coca-Cola's stock bubbled to a five-year high after it reported a fantastic quarter. Foreign sales accounted for 65 percent of Coke's beverage business. Other ur-American companies profiting from this trend include McDonald's (65 percent of sales overseas) and IBM (56 percent).

So if U.S. corporations are able to produce goods that sell comparatively higher in Europe than they do in the States (again, owing to the weak dollar), then Coke and its internationally friendly ilk are not terribly troubled by the current state of the U.S. dollar.

I wonder what the implications of such overseas profitability are for domestic jobs. It's true that U.S. corporations are profiting from high sales in Europe and Canada, but I'm not sure if that necessarily translates into more jobs or better employment conditions (e.g., wages) for employees of those corporations.

One thing is for sure: there's no better time (or excuse) for all my European and South American friends to come and visit me in Durham, North Carolina -- especially Durham, where you can buy a pack of Camel Lights for under $3.50; you can buy a decent used car for under $3,000 (as I did recently); and you can order, until 3am, 7 days a week, a meal "tray" consisting of a burger, two sides, and a drink for $3.99 at our local drive-thru, Cook-Out.

Or: you can meet in Hawaii when I visit my family in December.

West vs. East

2007-07-20T19:55:00.000-07:00

The BBC reports on a brewing conflict among Peru's neighbors to the east. Wealthy Bolivians who oppose the country's populist president Evo Morales wish to move the government's executive and legislative branches from La Paz, in the western highlands, (back) to Sucre, in central Bolivia. closer to the rich eastern provinces. The conflict's got history behind it (Sucre lost its exclusive claim to the capital in a civil war with La Paz in 1899) and is framed by a class struggle that has polarized Bolivia's political camps.

The story reads in full below; any and all updates or clarifications are welcome:

Hundreds of thousands of people have been taking part in what is being described as the biggest ever protest in Bolivia's main city, La Paz.

They are angered by a proposal to transfer the executive and legislative branches of government to Sucre.

Sucre served as the sole capital until 1899. Since then, the two cities have shared the title.

The latest proposal was put forward by opponents of the country's President, Evo Morales.

They have been seeking greater autonomy for the wealthier eastern provinces, as part of the ongoing rewriting of the Bolivian constitution.

Regional rivalry

They argue that Sucre, which is in the centre of the country and is the seat of the country's judicial branch of government, is better placed to serve as a capital than La Paz, which is on the western edge of Bolivia.

But those in favour of La Paz say switching the capital from Bolivia's largest city, with a population of 1.7 million, to Sucre, population 250,000, would be expensive and divisive.

Sucre was the site of Bolivia's founding in 1825 and its sole capital until losing a brief civil war to La Paz in 1899.

Its demand for the return of the seat of government has fuelled a regional rivalry between President Morales' supporters in Bolivia's poor western highlands and his opponents in the more prosperous east.

Cameron Got Served, or, Sendero Luminoso Revisited

2007-07-11T18:58:00.000-07:00

On her recent trip to Peru, Hollywood starlet Cameron Diaz was called out for committing a fashion faux pas that left the actress grasping for humanitarian words of apology.

While touring the famed Inca ruins of Machu Picchu, Diaz sported an olive-green bag that featured a red star and the phrase, "Serve the People," in Chinese characters. This phrase is known to be one of the hallmark slogans of Mao Zedong's Chinese Communist Party.

The problem? News sources say that Peruvians are especially sensitive to such symbology because it is reminiscent of the bloody guerrilla war that the Maoist group Shining Path, or Sendero Luminoso, waged in the country throughout the 1980s and up to the early '90s. Close to 70,000 people are thought to have perished as a result of the war, but news agencies have omitted the fact that Sendero Luminoso is said to be responsible for 31,331 of those casualties. According to Human Rights Watch, government security forces were responsible for a third of the killings; the remaining deaths are mostly unattributed.

Without condoning the actions of Sendero Luminoso, I think it's important to properly frame the statistics people are citing with regard to the war. It's clear that both the group's actions and the Peruvian government's response to those actions were reckless and drastic -- together they had the effect of making paranoia and violence a part of everyday life. Indeed the war created the social conditions for what the anthropologist Michael Taussig calls "terror as usual."

Diaz, we know, was unaware of this significant aspect of Peruvian history. A Peruvian civil rights activist (on whom news agencies rely to voice the collective opinion of Peruvians who are or would be or have been offended by Diaz's bag), Pablo Rojas, is quoted as saying: "[The bag] alludes to a concept that did so much damage to Peru, that brought about so many victims... I don't think she should have used that bag where the followers of that ideology did so much damage."

Rojas is entirely justified in making this statement, but it seems to me the lack of world-historical knowledge Diaz displayed is hardly unusual for the privileged tourist who travels abroad. I dare say that most American travelers to Peru know next to nothing of the country's history, recent or otherwise. Diaz (who grew up in Australia) is your average tourist; it's her celebrity (cameras focused on her) and pseudo-political chic (where political symbology and slogans are now marketed for fashionable consumption) that led to this cultural misunderstanding.

Rojas's actual target of criticism, then, is not Cameron Diaz the "person" but Cameron Diaz the star-image. The blame for this episode of cultural insensitivity might be equally shared among Diaz's entourage: her publicist, her fashion consultant, her image-makers. Note how the olive-green bag is meant to complement Diaz's "backpacker look": loose clothing, a hat to shield her face from the sun, and what appears to be a hemp bracelet (or one made of a similarly organic material). The only flourish I can detect in these photos is a purple scarf (or two?) rolled around Diaz's neck. At any rate, the bag's political sloganeering is but one fashionable element in a complete celebrity package.

Perhaps blame should also be attributed to the brichero, or "native" tour guide, who appears next to Diaz on Machu Picchu. Note the designer sweater and unsullied jeans -- this guy really came prepared.

The brichero's beaming gaze and I'm-all-ears stance say it all: entranced by Diaz's beauty, that inimitable smile, that aura of Hollywood celebrity, our guide likely didn't even notice the remnant of Maoist symbology that emblazons the bag in question.

At the Lunch Counter: Civil Rights Way Down South

2007-07-11T18:34:00.000-07:00

Does anyone have more information on the following news item? I'm not familiar with the restaurant in question. I'm also interested in finding out whether the local district council is responsible for charging this restaurant with civil rights violations. This is the same district, remember, whose conservative evangelical mayor closed Down Town, a popular gay bar, just over a year ago -- a move widely seen as being a politically motivated attack on homosexuality.

LIMA, Peru (Dan Collyns, BBC) -- A popular restaurant in Lima has been temporarily closed down after several complaints that people with darker skin were refused entry.

The Café del Mar in Miraflores, a wealthy district of the Peruvian capital, is the first restaurant to be shut for alleged discrimination.

It will be closed for 60 days and was fined about $70,000 (£35,000).

Campaigners hope this is a first step in tackling Peru's deep divisions along racial and economic lines.

Officials from Peru's consumer protection agency and the municipality of Miraflores sealed the doors and placed signs on the entrances.

'Symbolic sanction'

For many human rights campaigners the closure is an important step in combating Peru's racial and economic discrimination.

Wilfredo Ardito is one of them: "This is a symbolic sanction. It is the first time happily that this practice in this terrible act of racial selection of the customer has been closed and we consider that this is the first step."

"Racism is something permanent in our society but it's terrible that even a place open to the public is practising this kind of situation," he said.

The Peruvian government only began imposing fines for discrimination in 2004 but a bill which passed through Congress some months ago reinforces existing legislation with jail sentences for those convicted of racial discrimination.

For centuries the white elite in Peru has held onto wealth and power despite the majority of the population being of indigenous or mixed descent.

But now there is more social mobility in Peruvian society and it seems the government of President Alan Garcia realises that Peru's social and economic inequality is hindering its development.

The American Creed

2007-06-18T08:50:00.001-07:00

While living and traveling in Peru and meeting people from different cultures and backgrounds, I was led to reflect on what might be described as the "character" of the American people. I wasn't forced by my friends and acquaintances to "defend" what it means to be an American; rather, conversations about European politics (Finnish parliamentary elections, the French presidential election, etc.) and Peruvian development inspired me to compare American attitudes toward government, education, and civil society to those of other nationalities. It was an open debate.

My Finnish friends in particular provided me with an interesting set of ideas about government, education, and civil society that stood in contrast to what I think is the predominant "American" view of such things. Finnish students and professionals alike remarked that while their country's very high taxes are at times a personal nuisance and too often mismanaged, the common, public good that those taxes ultimately serve is worth 1) the nuisance, and 2) the effort to reform government to become more fiscally efficient.

The socialist-style Finnish system applies a graduated income tax to its citizens so that the wealthy are responsible for paying more taxes (relative to their income) than the poor and working classes. And to be sure, there's the usual discontent among the middle and rich classes about social welfare -- the perception that many poor and working-class Finns don't do their part in finding gainful employment or in trying not to live off the state. Despite these very real social and economic problems, however, my Finnish friends told me that most well-off Finns continue to believe that it's ultimately a good thing to buttress the country's infrastructure and social networks with their taxes.

Hearing this made me ashamed to be an American. I knew instinctively that such a view of the common, public good was/is utterly foreign to the vast majority of Americans. Perhaps it wasn't always so. Or maybe this has always been the case in a country that prides itself on its individualist ethos and cult of self-determination. What I do know is that the American creed of every man (or: nuclear family unit) for himself was perfected during the Reagan Revolution, the late-'70s to mid-'90s social and political movement that, among other things, valorized private enterprise and unfettered capitalism at the expense of public institutions, social welfare, and, specifically, the very idea that the country's tax burden would be shared by all citizens.

One truly sad result of this long period of dismantling the bonds of our civil society is that many well-off Americans actually feel victimized by the government when it tries to raise their income tax (which of course is modest compared to those paid by citizens in other "First World" countries). Even worse is how well-off Americans tend to feel victimized by the poorest sectors of society -- those who don't earn a living wage, who need to work three jobs to make ends meet, and need I mention "illegal immigrants"? The poor: whom the well-off characterize as morally and culturally deficient leeches, in so many words. The poor: whose socioeconomic poverty is somehow their fault, and theirs only.

It's this cult of victimization that's uniquely American, it seems to me. The well-off Finns have their complaints, sure. But at least many of them are able to distinguish a problem of social inequality (the poor needing help and the state mismanaging the system that distributes "help" to the poor) from a basically personal feeling of resentment, which, as Nietzsche reminds us, is the other face of self-righteousness (the poor are themselves deficient and so offend "me" by taking "my" money).

But why take my word for it? Durham's weekly news magazine The Independent cites this quotation from a recent article in the daily newspaper The News & Observer:

"The last thing I want to do is put more money into education, because I don't want to pay for something I never use."
--Bob Williamson, 46, a childless real estate executive from Wake Forest, quoted in an N&O story about how a majority of Wake County residents who don't have children oppose new taxes to help the schools keep up with growth.

So goes the American creed.

[For: Katri, Maria, Tiia, Lissu, Laura]

Call on Me: London--Lima--Chapel Hill

2007-06-01T08:37:00.000-07:00

London, summer 2005: DJ Eric Prydz's "Call on Me" takes Europe by storm and is the dance hit of the summer. Sampling Steve Winwood's 1987 song "Valerie," the song is a foot-thumping blend of catchy beats and memorable lyrical crescendos: "Call on meeeee... Call on me! Call on meeeee... Call on me! Call on meeeee... I'm the same boy I used to be."

The music video for "Call on Me" is equally memorable: an aerobics class workout becomes the site for a hot-and-heavy flirtation between the instructor and the lone male in the room. Curiously, while the girls around him get sweaty and toss their hair, the male remains sweat-free and smiles in a sort of goofy, dazed way. At any rate, the video is probably best known for the pelvic-thrust dance move that the class performs in unison after the first crescendo. The move goes a little something like this: spread your legs apart, keeping them parallel to each other; bend your knees and place your hands on your thighs; and now in this semi-sumo-squatting position, THRUST your hips to the beat of the song. It's that simple!

Though the unremixed version of "Call on Me" runs a little less than three minutes, it becomes an immediate dance sensation throughout Europe and the pelvic thrust becomes a rather popular form of bodily expression in discos for the entire summer of 2005.

Lima, summer (or the northern hemisphere's spring) 2007: At the popular club La Cede in Miraflores, the lone gay-friendly discoteca in Lima (the "gay club" in Miraflores, Downtown, was recently shut down by the district's conservative, evangelical mayor), I grow accustomed to watching music videos of songs the DJ plays during his set. While I'm sure this fusion of song and video has become the norm in dance clubs the world over, I really only experience it for the first time at La Cede. (It's been five years since I was last in Europe.)

Now although La Cede is mind-bogglingly crowded every time I go in there, I generally enjoy its atmosphere, its diverse crowd, and the music/videos the DJ plays -- a sometimes jarring but always fun blend of salsa, reggaeton, and '80s pop. As far as I can tell, the two constants in the DJ's playlist are: "Gasolina" and Erasure's "A Little Respect." And the best part is that the mostly Peruvian crowd knows all the lyrics to both songs. "Oh baby pleeeeease / give a little respect / to-hoo-ooo meeeee!"

Chapel Hill, North Carolina, summer 2007: It's my first sojourn to Chapel Hill, a neighbor city to Durham, since my return to the States. In fact, it's probably my first trip to the Chapel Hill bar scene in over a year. Five of us pack into my friend Bea's two-door, and having to ride on the "hump" in the back seat reminds me a bit of "making do" with transportation in Lima.

Chapel Hill is pretty dead this Thursday night -- perhaps it's post-Memorial Day fatigue. After a quiet spell at the bar Jack Sprat, we go to the dance club The Library, an old favorite of mine from three years ago. Bea, Ignacio, and Darian don't like the scene there and leave within fifteen minutes. Alvaro and I, though, are digging the fact that at least some people are dancing here and so stick around a while longer for a drink.

After a forgettable song by Eminem, the DJ puts on "Call on Me" and those funky aerobics girls appear on the huge TV screen above the dance floor. The students on the dance floor scream in unison -- the song has become a huge dance hit on the college circuit. (Perhaps there's a musical progression/regression to be examined here: from European discos to the U.S. college party scene.)

Without any prompting, girls in their short skirts and boys in their khaki shorts and polo shirts "assume the position": it's the preppy version of the dance. After that first deliciously frenetic crescendo, twenty college kids thrust their pelvises in an orgy of glittery make-up and popped collars.

Alvaro and I are watching the dance floor, and the music video, from a booth ten feet away. At first I make a vague attempt to laugh off the scene in front of us. But then I feel a weird sensation. My feet start tapping the bar stool I'm sitting on. My hand begins to rap the countertop in sync with the song's beat. A smile crosses my face. I love this song!!

But... but then I feel paralyzed. I'm bumping along in my seat, yet I can't muster up the courage to just go to the dance floor and move, let my body go. To be fair, I don't a friend to dance with, and the dance floor is pretty empty overall. Still, I can't help but feel that if this had been Lima, I would have wasted no time in getting my pelvic thrust on.

I mention something to Alvaro about the difference in social relations in bars and clubs between Latin America and the States. We agree that things are less socially awkward and uptight in Latin America, where making eyes at a girl can in fact be a seductive thing and dancing with a guy doesn't mean you're "his" or "with him." Here in Chapel Hill you could sense something almost completely different: friends surely had a great time with each other, but there was very little opportunity for strangers to meet, to dance, to blush, to sing.

The song ends with my not having moved an inch from my seat.

I remember the several nights of dancing I enjoyed at La Cede. I remember joining the tourists, locals, expats, and guides who were dancing the night away at a discoteca in Arequipa.

I finish my beer and wonder how long it will be before I dance like that again.

(Ya No Estoy) Loco por Volverte a Ver

2007-05-26T12:31:00.000-07:00

A pop-reggaeton song grabbed me from the first day I arrived in Lima. I had heard the song in sundry ambient settings: usually while in a taxi or combi, or while eating at a menú restaurant. The song's swaying beats and catchy lyrics penetrated my subconscious in no time, and I found myself humming its choral tune while cooking, shaving, and e-mailing.

None of my friends in Lima knew who actually sang the song. In truth, I was somewhat embarrassed to admit loving it, because the song seemed to be this summer's bubblegum pop hit in Peru. I was reluctant to reveal to new friends my secret admiration for what probably amounted to the Peruvian version of Justin Timberlake (the singer really did sound like early JT in Spanish -- their voices share a cuddly, high-pitched boyishness).

Another stumbling block to my figuring out who sang the song was that I barely understood the lyrics in Spanish. It wasn't just that I couldn't translate the lyrics into English; I also couldn't discern the exact words being sung. And so whenever I mustered up the courage to ask someone if she knew who sang this mysterious but wildly popular song, I could only say, "You know, the one that goes, 'Duh-duh-dah-duh-duh-dah-duuuhuhuh!'" Needless to say, that tactic didn't get me very far.

Well, finally, in mid-May, Leigh Campoamor e-mailed me an exciting message: from the empleada next door, she learned that the song in question was called "No puedo volverte a ver" and that it was sung by the Cumbia Kings. I was elated. I thought I had found the Holy Grail of sappy reggaeton. I immediately went to Google to find a site where I could listen to the song.

Unfortunately, my search was in vain. Even with quotation marks around the song's title, I found only a handful of sites that mentioned the exact phrase "No puedo volverte a ver." And the group the Kumbia Kings (with a "k," not a "c") didn't seem to have such a song in their repertoire. I was so disappointed. How could such a popular song elude me for so long?

On the penultimate night of my stay in Lima, I met a group of Peruvian students through my friend Rosana (whom I had met at a French expat birthday party about a month earlier). We went out for drinks and dancing in Jesus Maria, a distinctly non-touristy district in Lima. I was quite pleased to be going someplace with which I had very little familiarity; it was my last great adventure, outside of Miraflores, in Lima.

Anyway, at some point in the evening I thought I'd ask one of Rosana's friends if he knew the song I was dying to get information about. In broken Spanish, I told him I was going to hum a few lines from the song's chorus. I then did my old shtick of singing, "Duh-duh-dah-duh-duh-dah-duuuhuhuh!" Rosana's friend paused for a moment, and then said those magical words: he knew exactly which song I was talking about. He told me the song's title, and I committed it to memory.

Well, almost... The next day I e-mailed Leigh excitedly and said, "One of the Peruvian guys I met last night told me the song I desperately want to hear has the main lyric, 'Loco volver que a ver,' or perhaps 'Loco por volver aver.' At any rate, the lyric basically says, 'I'm crazy to see you again.'"

I knew my version of the lyrics weren't exactly correct, as further Google searches didn't turn anything up of significance. But Leigh's response to my message struck gold: "i guess it'd be 'loco por volverte a ver.' that makes sense grammatically. hope you can find it!"

Sure enough, the song I had spent four maddening months looking for turned out to be: Chili Fernandez's "Loco por volverte a ver." Not only that, but the Kumbia Kings did in fact have their own version of the song -- I'm just not sure whether they or Chili recorded it first. At any rate, my quest was over, my Google search complete, and I had located enough pirated YouTube "music videos" of Chili's version (my preferred version) to make me happy for a long time to come.

Here's an example of one such music video posted online. Note the use of manga images here; the Japanese animated art is all the rage in Peru these days.

Isn't that awesomely sappy... yet true?

Now that I'm back in the States, listening to it constantly on a repeated loop, I've realized something very interesting about the lyrics (see below) of this song. While the song's title is "Loco por volverte a ver" -- "dying to see you again" (thanks, Justin) -- its main lyric actually reads, "Ya no estoy loco por volverte a ver," or "I'm already not dying to see you again." And so although Chili slurs the "ya no estoy" in singing the lyric, and although the song as a whole is resolutely upbeat in tone and rhythm, this is all about heartbreak, not falling in love. "Don't think the world revolves around you," Chili sings, just before dropping the line, "I'm already over you" -- my paraphrase of "ya no estoy loco por volverte a ver."

Knowing this now -- that my four-month-long search for a starry-eyed, romantic ditty has instead revealed a bittersweet riposte to an ex-lover -- makes me appreciate "Loco por volverte a ver" even more, and it makes me think back on the own love I lost in Lima.

“Loco por volverte a ver” de Chili Fernandez
(from the Musicstar X website)

Que te llamo, que no olvido
y no puedo estar sin ti…
que me estoy volviendo loco
desde que no estas aqué
Que yo nunca encontraré
mis deseos de vivir
Y tu piensas que yo muero
pues ya ves que no es así

Rompí tus fotos cuando te marchaste de aquí
quemé tus cartas y no volví a pensar en ti
y me reía yo escuchando a tus amigos decir
que a todo el mundo le estás preguntando por mi.
Pasé las noches enteras bailando sin ti
ya no me duele tanto que tu no estés aquí
ya no me importa lo que pienses de mi
no creas que el mundo no gira sin ti

Coro:**
Ya no estoy loco por volverte a ver
ya no paso por tu casa
ya no llamo para ver si acaso estas ahí
Ya no estoy loco por volverte a ver
y me dicen mis amigos que he cambiado,
que yo estoy mejor sin ti…

Y el teléfono no vuelve a tener su ring ring
y mis amigas que siempre me querían dar
su pum pum, mami mami, pum pum, mami mami
Ya no hace falta llamarte, ya me convencí
que ya no duele tanto que tu no estés aquí
Ya no me importa lo que pienses de mi
no creas que el mundo no gira sin ti.

Coro:**
Ya no estoy loco por volverte a ver
ya no paso por tu casa
ya no llamo para ver si acaso estas ahí
Ya no estoy loco por volverte a ver
y me dicen mis amigos que he cambiado,
que yo estoy mejor sin ti…

YA NO PASO LAS NOCHES PENSANDO
QUE ERA YO EL QUE TE ESTABA FALLANDO
YA NO TENGO QUE ESTAR ESPERANDO
PORQUE EL TELEFONO POR MI ESTA SONANDO

Y AUNQUE TE SIGO, YA ME HAS VISTO Y YA ME CONVENCÍ
QUE NO PODÍA ESTAR CONTIGO, NO ERAS PARA MÍ,
Y SI TU SIGUES CONVENCIDA QUE LLORO POR TI
EL RITMO, EL DELIRIUM CANTA PARA TI

Pasé las noches enteras bailando sin ti
ya no me duele tanto que tu no estes aqui
y ya no me importa lo que pienses de mi
no creas que el mundo no gira sin ti

Coro:**
Ya no estoy loco por volverte a ver
ya no paso por tu casa
ya no llamo para ver si acaso estas ahí
Ya no estoy loco por volverte a ver
y me dicen mis amigos que he cambiado,
que yo estoy mejor sin ti…

Welcome Back

2007-05-24T07:11:00.000-07:00

I left Lima with a heavy heart Monday night. Anyone there can tell you I wasn't ready to leave -- I thought of traveling more with my friend Emily, spending more time with my Peruvian friends, eating more amazingly good and cheap chifa lunches... In the end, though, there were too many things that demanded my immediate attention in the States, not least removing personal possessions (and rare research materials) from my carrel before Duke's library closes down on June 1 for major renovations. And so I didn't end up extending my stay in Lima; I left my apartment and the city with tears in my eyes.

The flight from Lima to Houston went without a hitch. I sat next to a girl who turned out to be a Las Vegas socialite who had gone on a week-long vacation to Peru with her boyfriend's mother. It was the closest I had come to having a conversation with a Paris Hilton-type scenester. Contrary to stereotype, though, I was glad to hear she had had a wonderful time in Cusco, leaving her cell phone and e-mail behind, meeting interesting people from around the world, and only wearing her jeans and sneakers out to the local discotecas. I don't know whether she'd seek out another travel opportunity like this one in the future (she clearly enjoyed showing me pictures of her and her friends partying in Vegas), but it was nice to know she at least had this experience and will probably never forget it, wherever life may take her.

I touched down in Houston the next morning around 6. After going through immigration, re-checking my luggage, and making my way to another terminal, I was anxious to board the plane to Atlanta for the middle-leg of my trip. From there I still had to take a flight to Raleigh-Durham (RDU) in the late morning. But bad weather in Houston -- what seemed to be a severe thunderstorm, though I couldn't tell if what I was seeing was lightning or the fluorescent lighting at the gate flashing on and off -- delayed my flight by two hours, which meant that I was going to miss my connecting flight in Atlanta. Fortunately (I thought), I was rebooked on a direct flight from Houston to RDU, which was supposed to leave just an hour and a half later. Not only would I only have to take one flight, but I was supposed to get into RDU even a bit earlier than expected.

Well, one delay was followed by another, and I didn't end up leaving Houston until 3 in the afternoon. The only saving grace of that trip was that I had the whole row to myself. There I sat in the middle seat and finished reading Steve Martin's Shopgirl while listening to The Postal Service's "Such Great Heights" on my iPod.

My friend and Literature colleague Justin Izzo welcomed me back to Durham at the airport. I'm staying at his place until I can move back into my apartment on June 1. I couldn't be luckier, really, as Justin is not only a fellow world-traveler who appreciates good backpacking stories but also a rabid football fan like myself. We caught up over a nice Italian dinner at Cinelli's and, later, discoursed on the recently completed English Premiership season as we worked our way through an 18-pack of Bud Light on the balcony of his apartment.

The next day Justin earned bragging rights when his team, AC Milan, beat England's Liverpool 2-1 in the Champions League final in Athens. He got to wear his Milan jersey in public while my newly purchased Liverpool jersey had to remain in the suitcase. After the match, we decided to go to the grocery store to pick up some things for dinner.

The path from Justin's apartment to the Whole Foods supermarket in Durham is direct: simply go down Broad St. for two miles or so and you're there. We jumped into Justin's car and set off for our grocery run. Everything was fine until we reached the intersection where we were supposed to turn right to get to Whole Foods. Near the traffic light, which was green, we saw a red minivan veer over the yellow dividing line. Thinking the driver was reckless, Justin slowed down and brought his car almost to a complete stop. The red minivan kept advancing. In a split second, where everything around me seemed frozen in time, I heard Justin shout, "WHOA!!," I braced myself in the passanger seat, and the red minivan crossed the dividing line completely and hit our car head-on.

Fortunately, the minivan was not going terribly fast and Justin and I escaped injury. I was able to open my passenger door and walk over to the minivan as Justin turned off the engine and collected his things. The first thing I saw was a little girl, no more than eight years old, get out of the driver's seat and run back toward the supermarket. There was a younger girl, likely her sister, who remained in one of the van's front seats. Both girls were sobbing and screaming for their mother. It was then that I realized that THE MINIVAN HAD BEEN DRIVEN INTO US BY THE EIGHT-YEAR-OLD GIRL.

Justin and I were dumbfounded. Bystanders made sure we were OK, and one lady took the girls in her care, removing them from the scene of the accident. Soon a woman, presumably the girls' mother, ran to the minivan and half-bawled, half-wailed, "Why did you do this? Why did you do this? You hit a BMW! I don't have money for this!" We then learned that there was another child in the van, probably a baby who was hidden from view in the back seat. Bystanders calmed her down and made sure that her children were safe and free from injury. When everyone was accounted for, Justin and the woman moved their vehicles off to the side and we all awaited a policeman to assess the situation and write a report.

What we determined from eyewitness accounts and our own piecing together of events was that the woman had left her vehicle running and likely double-parked in the Whole Foods lot while she ran in to buy groceries. She had left three girls in the minivan while another one accompanied her into the store. Though she claimed to have gone in to buy only greens, a friend of the woman's later brought a shopping cart half-full with plastic grocery bags to her minivan.

The two older girls were curious and somehow managed to put the car into drive. What happened next was amazing. Realizing that the minivan was accelerating (even without their pressing on the gas pedal), the girls panicked and the oldest one started to maneuver the wheel in order to avoid hitting anyone. She managed to drive the van down an entire lane of parked vehicles, run over a concrete parking block, jump the curb leading to Broad St., steer the vehicle to the left (to avoid hitting a wall across the way), and finally, surely exhausted and frightened beyond belief, ended up just colliding with us as we approached from the opposite direction.

Knowing this story was little consolation for Justin and me, as we were flabbergasted that this woman had left her children in such dangerous circumstances to begin with. It was an accident that could've been avoided with some patience and a little common sense. The main thing, of course, was that no one had gotten hurt and that insurance would cover the cost of repairing Justin's car. It could've been so much worse for the girls had they not run into us, I suppose.

One day after the accident, Justin and I are still shellshocked from the experience. His car will be out of service for the foreseeable future, though the good news is that I bought a new used car this afternoon to replace my 1993 Mercury Topaz that died on me just two days before I left for Peru. Though it's not a model from the 2000s, my Nissan Sentra is comfortable and gas-efficient, and it has the added luxury (which I've never had in a car) of a CD player.

But all these car issues, which I've had to deal with so quickly upon my return, make me long for life back in Lima, where having a car wasn't an option and taking combis was the norm. I got on just fine, and I saved a lot of money on transportation to boot.

Some tourists like to complain that Lima's combis are uncomfortable, their schedules are erratic, their drivers are reckless, and you're not always guaranteed a seat. I've never been in an accident while on a combi, and I got used to paying only 1 nuevo sol, or roughly $.33, for a trip to almost anywhere in Lima.

On my first full day back in Durham, I got into a car accident with an eight-year-old girl driving a minivan down Broad St. My Nissan Sentra, which Justin now relies on for transportation, is a nice ride and was affordably priced; but the gas tank reads Almost Empty, and I admit to kind of forgetting how to refill a tank.

El Clásico de Lima

2007-05-21T15:22:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, May 6, my friend Alonso Cardeñas invited me to go with him to el clásico, the football derby match between cross-town rivals Alianza Lima and Universitario. I had had a long night of partying on Saturday, but there was no way I'd pass up seeing my first South American football match -- and a derby to boot! I dragged myself out of bed at 2 and, luckily for me, only had to put on shabby clothes before heading out the door. Alonso warned me that football matches attract pickpockets; thus, I should wear only a shirt and jeans and bring only the money I needed for the ticket and some food. For added effect, he told me I shouldn't shave either. I guess there's nothing more intimidating in Peru than a chino who looks like Grizzly Adams. I was ready to go.

Football derbies are always special sporting events. They are the epitome of sporting passion and occupy pride of place in local and regional history. Derbies also bring out the most intense emotions and expressions of pride in fans: they are louder, and more vociferous, in their cheers, applause, and chants when their opponents also happen to be their neighbors. Buenos Aires teams Boca Juniors and River Plate are known to host the most spectacular, and sometimes violent, clashes. The Lima clásico is hardly known outside of the country, but I had no qualms. A world football fan myself, I value any and all opportunities to see a live match.

Alonso's father was kind enough to drive us to the stadium. Amazingly, he and Alonso are veterans of the 1986 (Mexico) and 1990 (Italy) World Cups. They even got to see the final of the '86 Cup between Argentina and West Germany. This was the famous 3-2 match in which Argentina's Diego Maradona helped his country win with the "Hand of God" goal -- a goal that had gone in off his hand, without the referee noticing. Clearly I was in good company.

Alonso and I got out of the car about six or seven blocks from the stadium. We immediately found ourselves in a throng of people who were making their way to see the game. It was delightful chaos. Streets were closed, police were patrolling on horse and on foot, and ticket-hawkers lined the sidewalks advertising (by shouting) their goods.

Alonso stopped at one seller and asked for tickets. We were presented with two options: cheap tickets for the open "South" section of the stadium or slightly more expensive tickets for the "West" section. At first I went for the West tickets, as I figured I'd want to watch the match with the full pitch in equal view. Alonso hesitated and said, "But this is Peru. The quality isn't very good." (That is, I didn't need to worry about seeing everything that happened on the pitch.) He then clarified his statement by saying that we'd have much more fun in the South section, where Alianza's fans, known as the "Comando Svr," sang, chanted, and beat drums throughout the match. (I later learned that the fans spell "Sur" with a "v" instead of a "u" because their fiercest rivals, Universitario, also go by the nickname "La U.") Once Alonso told me this, I knew exactly what to do. I bought myself a ticket for the South section.

We made our way to the long line of people waiting to get into the South entrance. I was probably the only non-Peruvian in the lot; this was truly a locals-only thing. Alonso and I wound our way around the block and took our place in the line. While we were waiting, I bought an Alianza Lima jersey from a vender and put it on over my shabby shirt. I was now in my true colors. It's not that Alonso is an Alianza fan and so I had to be one too; rather, Alianza has a history of being the "people's team," whereas La U was/is known to attract the more shi-shi classes in Lima. As Alonso would say, "I am a man of the people."

The line eventually started moving, albeit very slowly. I discovered then that Peruvian police don't mess around. Any line-cutters or trash-talkers were beaten with batons or policemen's bare hands. I tempered my shock when the kids who were the object of these beatings laughed at their tormenters and generally acknowledged their rascaliness. This response was, for me, an interesting lesson in Peruvian social relations, and specifically how people here deal with police and (the threat of) violence.

Once Alonso and I got in the stadium, we squeezed our way through the frenzied crowd and got seats on the top of the South section. The stadium's nickname is Matute, and it can hold up to 35,000 people. This is actually on the low-end of stadium capacity; Universitario's stadium, for example, can hold 80,000 people. At any rate, across from us, in the North section, was a huge swath of La U fans. Police surrounded their section, making sure that violence didn't erupt between rival bands of rabid supporters.

The match kicked off at 3:30, and for the first twenty minutes or so everyone was on the edge of his seat, waiting for the match's breakthrough goal. Unfortunately for Alianza, the team was playing like shit and La U controlled the game both offensively and defensively. In particular, one Renzo Benavides, a striker, seemed sluggish and out of form, as he never completed his runs in a way that showed he really wanted the ball. Fans started to give him shit, all the while calling him by his somewhat undesirable nickname, El Gordo, or fat one. (When Benavides was later substituted in the second half, he was whistled off the pitch and, rather than join his teammates on the bench, elected to go straight to the locker room.)

As the match wore on, Alonso and I grew bored, but the Comando Svr remained vibrant and upbeat. This was genuine blood-support. As the saying goes, these people bleed the colors of their team. Their efforts seemed to pay off close to the half-hour mark, when Alianza was awarded a penalty after a foul in the penalty area. La U's goal was directly in front of our section, so we got to see the action unfold before our eyes. Unfortunately, after a moment of hushed anticipation, the penalty-taker missed the goal entirely as the ball sailed wide of the net. "CONCHA SU MADRE!!" roared the crowd. We were devastated.

After halftime, the pace started to pick up again. Only La U was the one to strike first. Their defender headed in a goal from a corner (which bounced off the heads of two other La U players), made possible by some truly shambolic defending by the Alianza squad. The La U supporters rushed to the front of their section in a wave of red, a typical South American way of celebrating a goal. They then picked up their singing and urged their team to get another one.

The match was dire for the next half-hour. Alianza was desperate to get a goal, but La U's defense was rock-solid. Even the Comando Svr seemed resigned to a home loss. On the few occasions when Alianza produced a close shot on La U's goal, all one heard was a blast of "CONCHA SU MADRE!!" from the crowd -- a reflexive, primal scream decrying our bad luck.

In the 88th minute, however, completely against the run of play, an Alianza midfielder scored a fine goal from just outside the penalty box. The South section was awakened from its relative slumber and we all jumped up and down and cheered, somewhat amazed that we were able to claw our way back into the game.

But, as is so often the case with the shifting fortunes of sport, our hearts were broken not three minutes later, when La U produced a classic counter-attack and scored the winner in stoppage time. We were so taken aback (from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows) by the goal that we couldn't even muster a "concha su madre" in response. We were deflated; our fate was sealed.

After the match, Alonso and I made our way out of the stadium with the rest of the Alianza fans. We walked in a kind of daze, slightly depressed that our team had lost the derby in the second-to-last minute of play. Still, we appreciated the action -- two goals in five minutes! -- that we did see in the end, and I was glad to have experienced my first South American football match.

Later that evening, in Miraflores, a guy driving a Volkswagen passed by Alonso and me on the street. He must have seen my jersey, and so he shouted something to us, in Spanish, which I could neither hear well nor translate. He kept repeating his question, but I kept responding with a blank face. Alonso, too, couldn't tell what the driver was saying, perhaps because he was still distracted by Alianza's defeat. The Volkswagen guy drove away after a handful of these blank exchanges. Just a few seconds later Alonso said, "Oh, he was asking us, 'Who won the game?'"

A Room with a View

2007-05-19T08:59:00.000-07:00

For the past two months I've been lucky to be living in a beautiful, three-story apartment in Miraflores, Lima's tourist and commercial center on the coast. Located at 122 Ca. Buenos Aires, my building is just two blocks from the malecón, the scenic path that overlooks the beach, and a five-minute walk from Av. Larco, the main thoroughfare for Miraflores' hotels, restaurants, and businesses. Our street is surprisingly quiet for being centrally located in the district; it's something of a rarity in the busy, bustling chaos of the city.

I live with three roommates. Laurent is a Frenchman who works for the shirt company Lacoste. He's been living in Peru for about two years, and he's the main renter of the apartment. His Spanish is near flawless on account of his living in Barcelona and Mexico D.F. prior to Lima. Laurent's girlfriend Evelyn is Peruvian, and she somehow moved in with us midway during my stay here. At any rate, Laurent has been a good sport, putting up with my tendency to fall asleep on the living room couch after long nights of partying.

Leslie is a native of Montana and has been living here for about a year. She recently quit her job at an agency that sends Peruvian students on exchange work programs to the States. Leslie was my first friend in the apartment, and throughout my stay she's been kind enough to introduce me to her large group of expat and Peruvian friends in Lima. Leslie's heading off to the London School of Economics in the fall.

Ursula is a Dartmouth College junior, and we share a certain bond over the fact that she goes to my alma mater and is a comparative literature major, no less. Ursula's only here for two months, interning at a microfinance research institution. From what she tells me, her work experience hasn't been terribly rewarding; she travels weekly to Huaráz to observe projects that somehow never materialize. Ursula lent me her copy of Ernest Hemingway's To Have and Have Not, which I wrote about in my other blog, The Paperback Museum.

My room is on the third floor of the apartment. And because the apartment (no. 601) is located on the top floor of the building, this means I have access to a rooftop terrace, which is perfect for sunbathing, parties, and writing. Perhaps you'd like a tour?

Well, first let's walk through Ursula's room, which is the only way to get to the third floor of the apartment. This is less inconvenient than you might think, mainly because Ursula and I respect each other's space and sleep-time as much as possible. At the end of her room there's a spiral staircase that leads to my room.

This is a fun route to take to get to my quarters -- almost like entering a kid's private clubhouse. But watch your head! You need to duck to avoid hitting it on the walkway at the top of the stairs. This is especially hazardous if you happen to be tired or drunk or both, and if Ursula's already asleep and the lights are off.

Now that you've reached the top of the staircase, you'll see this when you look down

and this when you survey the room.

I keep the glass doors to the terrace open most of the time to let the slight Lima breeze (especially now that it's winter here) ventilate the room. And though it's certainly not most people's preference, I love having a lot of sunlight in my room for reading and for waking up naturally in the mornings.

Walk toward the bed and from there you can see I have a lovely sitting area opposite the terrace.

There's more light there for reading and relaxing. And to the right you can see my "media center," which consists of a non-functional stereo that the previous occupant left me, lots of pirated DVDs, some empty CD cases, and my books, lots of books. Really I prefer to listen to my iTunes on my bed.

I don't want to keep you long. Let's just go outside.

From here you can see the Miraflores cityscape to the left

and, if you look very closely, Barranco (the neighboring district) and the ocean to the right.

The terrace is, for me, the pièce de resistance of the apartment. I've several fond memories of time spent on the terrace. Most notably was Lea and Tabea's last night in South America, when, after staying out at Yakana's, dancing until 6 in the morning, we returned home, headed for the terrace, and were witness to a beautiful sunrise.

I'd be lucky to secure this room upon my return to Lima. It's not likely, though, as Laurent will find new roommates to fill our shoes, and who knows how long they'll be living here. And so in just two days' time I'll bid goodbye to my terrace and hope that my apartment back in the States will make me feel as much at home (again) as mine in Lima did.

A Few Movies for the Backpacker to Enjoy

2007-05-07T11:08:00.000-07:00

This is a list I'm compiling for my friend and travel-partner, Tosca, to whom I promised to send a list of recommended movies for her to catch up on when she returns to the Netherlands in early May. Rather than spurt out any movie that struck my fancy, I decided to focus this list on films I liked that somehow relate to travel culture and/or South America. The list is by no means exhaustive, and I hope you respond with questions, comments, and suggestions of your own!

In no particular order:

1. Morvern Callar. After her boyfriend commits suicide on Christmas Eve, Morvern, played by the phenomenal Samantha Morton, quietly "disposes" of his body and embarks on a soul-searching journey to Spain. Sunglasses and Scottish accent in tow, Morvern's movements through the sun-scorched landscapes of Spain provide an ironic contrast to her displaced misery. Beautifully shot and sporting a great Euro-rock soundtrack, this movie for me explores some of the rawest emotions we experience when traveling alone and/or dealing with loss by traveling.

2. The Vanishing. Spoorlos is based on a classic Dutch novel, The Golden Egg. (Tosca told me she thinks she had to read it in school.) And indeed the film seems to me quintessentially Dutch in its treatment of a merry couple's summer vacation road trip to France. But when the girlfriend goes missing at a roadside rest-stop, her lover is left to wonder what could have possibly happened to her. His search ends a few years later when the French abductor -- a terrifyingly mild-mannered family man -- offers to show the lover exactly what happened to her. That the movie becomes more suspenseful the more we witness the abductor conducting his daily routine is a testament to its mastery of a basic theme: the horror of being confronted with the limits of our own knowledge.

3. Fitzcarraldo. After Aguirre, the Wrath of God, German director Werner Herzog made this film about a crazed European adventurer who has the absolutely daft idea of transporting a massive river boat over a mountain, from one tributary of the Amazon to another. The shock-blonde Klaus Kinski, himself a bit of the crazy man in real life, plays Fitzcarraldo, and you can see the mad vision playing out across his eyes. Niether an elite colonial nor a friend of the Indians, for me Fitzcarraldo is Herzog's definitive vision of the alienated European "wild man," a "savage" at heart.

4. Grizzly Man. Another Herzog film, this one his recent documentary on the life and death of Timothy Treadwell. Treadwell spent several summers living with wild grizzlies in the Alaska, and he shot over 100 hours of footage of his experiences with the animals. The documentary uses this footage and Herzog's interviews with people who remember Treadwell to reconstruct his self-sacrificing passion for the bears. Particularly commendable is Herzog's sensitive analysis of the decidedly background roles Treadwell's girlfriends played in his documentation of his experiences. Yet it was one of his girlfriends who perished alongside him in what we are only left to imagine was an utterly gruesome mauling one night in their tent.

5. Keep the River on Your Right. A fine documentary about Jewish American artist Tobias Schneebaum's "lost" years living with cannibals in Papua New Guinea in the 1960s. Schneebaum had gone missing from his safari group and had been presumed dead. When he emerged from the jungle years later, he claimed to have tasted the human flesh of conquered tribesmen. The documentary follows an elderly Schneebaum on his first trip back to Papua New Guinea, in the 1990s, as he reunites with the companions and (male) lovers who opened up their world to him over 30 years ago.

6. Black Orpheus. Marcel Camus' classic appropriation of the Orpheus myth, set in Rio de Janeiro during Carnaval. Pulsating samba music drives the movie onward, while the images capture a strange beauty in the city's festivities -- a beauty at once colorful and somber; the perfect stage for Orpheus and Eurydice's doomed love to play itself out. A little known fact is that the woman who plays Eurydice hailed not from Rio but from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

7. Nine Queens. A fun caper film set in Buenos Aires. The plot is fast-paced but not too rushed... and hey, who couldn't like a story that involves counterfeit stamps? There's even a smart reference to the economic crisis that crippled the country no more than a few years ago.

8. City of God. This frenetic, visually exciting film offers a unique perspective on the city´s infamous favelas: through the eyes of children and adolescents. These kids do lead vibrant, thought-provoking lives, and we are made to understand that their struggles are tied to circumstance rather than some inherent "culture of poverty."

9. Life and Debt. While not technically about South America, this documentary about the devastating toll IMF/World Bank policies have had on Jamaica's social fabric and economy, is worth seeing by any conscientious traveler to the global South.

10. 9 Songs. Michael Winterbottom's graphic tour-de-force of a young couple's summer fling is set against the backdrop of London's raging rock concert scene. There seems to be no end to the couple's passion for each other -- in every sex scene, it's as though they're discovering their bodies for the first time. Not about traveling per se (though the girl is American), but you have to believe these two are travelers at heart. Call it a modern-day Turkish Delight!

4 Reasons Why I Didn't Take Any Pictures in Buenos Aires

2007-05-07T10:57:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago I arrived by plane to Buenos Aires, Argentina, for a week-long stay in the most "European" of South American countries. I had absolutely no plans in store prior to arrival, so this was something of a "see what happens" adventure for me.

Thanks to some great advice from my Finnish friend Tiia back in Lima, I chose to stay in a hostel in San Telmo, a neighborhood renowned for its welcoming bars, yummy paradillas, and... well, a bustling nightlife. I got a cheap room (AR$18 per night) in a dormitorio with two bunk beds. It was a far cry from the relatively private quarters I've had in my travels around Peru, but I was actually very happy to do this trip as any bargain-needy backpacker would.

One of my roommates, recently arrived from the States via New York and Atlanta, was a Belgian named Sergio. A friendly psychology student from Brussels, Sergio and I had dinner at a nearby restaurant (where I had a nice cut of steak and some fries, or papas fritas) and conversed freely about his studies, which to my surprise consisted of lots of reading in continental philosophy (Nietzsche, Freud, Camus) and the intellectual history of emotion. It was great to meet a scholarly humanist like Sergio who, like me, found the need to balance his academic studies with backpacking and world-travel.

The next day Sergio and I met a South Korean traveler who, amazingly, was in the middle of a three- or four-year trip around the world. This guy was in his late 30s, had saved up money as a banker in Seoul, and one day had decided to quit his job and just travel for as long as he could. He's currently one and a half years into his trip, and his passport (I later saw for myself) was an amazing document in itself: visas and stamps from all over the world, including India, Iran, and Pakistan.

The three of us -- a sort of United Nations of travel-partners (not an unusual theme, of course, for backpacking culture) -- headed out for a walking tour of the city center, famous for its monuments, architecture, and European-style streets and pedestrian zones. Just a short while into our tour, however, Buenos Aires was inundated with rain. It wasn't a constant rainfall, but there were periods of intense drenchedness. We did our best to see the Plaza de Mayo and the Plaza San Martín, and we did see the city's major cathedral, the famous Casa Rosada (or Rose House: Argentina's version of the White House), and the "Big Ben" of South America (whose name escapes me). But we ended up spending the majority of our afternoon in a rather pleasant contemporary art museum (Imago), taking in an exhibit on the history and culture of the city of Buenos Aires.

Reason #1: Heavy rainfall, poor background/natural lighting, trying to keep as dry as possible rather than take only "eh" pictures. (Besides, after my travels around Peru, I think I now prefer to take pictures of people and/or of natural settings rather than "city" landmarks on their own.)

In the evening I met up with my Dutch friend Tosca, whom I met in Nasca (and to whom I should've introduced you by now, in a blog entry on that trip), and her Argentine friend Soledad, from Rosario. We learned in a Messenger chat that we'd be in Buenos Aires at the same time. We had such a good time traveling to Nasca and then Huacachina (both in Peru) together that we made our best effort to meet up in Buenos Aires.

Which is exactly what we did that night: the three of us had dinner at a somewhat mediocre restaurant (where Tosca's "lasagna" turned out to be a pile of cheese on two slices of eggplant; no actual pasta to speak of) but then went to a nice bar in San Telmo (Café de l'Arbol) to listen to live music and have a few beers. The first group that played at the bar was superb: two guys playing guitars, and one of them singing classic Spanish songs of revolution. The singer had a really nice voice, and many members of the audience sang along with him. Makes me want to learn more about the political context against which these songs were originally composed.

After two or four cervezas, Tosca, Soledad, and I went in search of a good disco. We ended up at Por Vos Buenos Aires, a rollicking, mostly Argentine, club in San Telmo that played tons of Argentine pop (but also the seemingly universal Latin pop song "Gasolina") and just a smidgen of American pop (the first lyric of "Sweet Child O' Mine," but not the rest of it!). Tosca and I did our best to keep the beat, and with the help of three jarras of beer and a Cuba Libre, we did.

Reason #2: Lots of drinking. Had my digital camera with me but didn't bother to take it out of my pocket. Tosca, however, did take some nice pictures of us over the course of the evening.

Reason #3 (follows from #2): Made it back to the hostel OK but woke up the next day at around 2pm. (I fell asleep in the hostel's TV room after having finished a late-night snack. In my defense, I did so only because a Dutch couple fell asleep on the couch next to me. I figured, My room is upstairs, these two are also clearly going to bed, so why not relax in this comfy armchair? I woke up later that morning and made my way to my room. But my South Korean friend told me he saw me asleep in the TV room as late as 10am! I thought it couldn't have been later than 9 before I stumbled upstairs.) Too lazy to do another city tour, and eyes too heavy to see straight.

To make up for our partying the previous night, Tosca, Soledad, and I went to the international book fair in town. It was a great experience. Thousands of people of all ages flocked to the convention center for a Sunday stroll of book-browsing, book-shopping, and general appreciation for literate and print culture. Apparently, the fair had been advertised throughout the country, via every possible medium, as a major cultural event. And so like most of its European counterparts, Argentina remains a deeply literate and literary nation. I hope to write more about the fair on my other blog, The Paperback Museum.

After the fair, the three of us did our own things. Tosca and I picked up dinner at McDonald's, which was a pleasant taste from "home" after a day of recovering from Argentine beer. (My Chilean roommate Osvaldo did give us shit for this, but we told him to leave us alone. I think Osvaldo had been staying in the hostel for two months when I met him.) I then went with a Chilean girl, Gabi, to have a few drinks at two other bars in San Telmo. The second bar featured a local funk-rap-reggae band that ended its set with a 10-minute version of James Brown's "Sex Machine (Get On Up)."

The next day Tosca and I bade farewell to Soledad as she headed back to Rosario. Tosca and I had already talked about going to Iguazú Falls, the majestic waterfalls in the north of Argentina (actually on the border with Argentina and Brazil), by taking a night-bus later that day. Though this meant we had to leave Buenos Aires without seeing much, it also meant spending more time together and at a site that everyone who travels around South America says is a "must-see."

Tosca and I, it turns out, have similar traveling philosophies: make the most of where you are, and always keep open the possibility of visiting somewhere again in the future. (This is obviously very easy for a city like Buenos Aires.) So on Monday we decided to call it a day on the metropolis. But before we did, we went shopping.

Reason #4: While fun and memorable in its own way, I didn't want to take pictures of Tosca and me shopping.

I got a nice pair of leather dress shoes, a nice dress shirt, and two ties. I could've bought more, but I didn't want to embarass myself in front of Tosca (!).

We left in the afternoon for Puerto Iguazú, 18 hours to the north of Buenos Aires. On our way to the Retiro, or central station, Tosca took two pictures through the window of the colectivo, or public bus: the Casa Rosada and a government building. The pictures, which I now have saved on my laptop, are actually quite good, as though Tosca took them from the street on a day-long walking tour of the city.

Dwelling in Colca Canyon

2007-05-07T10:36:00.000-07:00

Almost two months ago now, I made a spur-of-the-moment decision to travel to Arequipa, Peru, a city in the mountains in the southern part of the country. I made the decision on a Monday afternoon and left around 8:00 that evening. I accompanied my friend Maria, a Finn I had met two days prior at a big lonche at Jorge's apartment (and then Huaringas Bar and then Yakana disco...).

Traveling to Arequipa involved a very long overnight bus ride down the Peruvian coastline, and it took over 12 hours. I'm just thankful I had Maria there for company and conversation. We talked about the recent Finnish parliamentary elections (held just the day before), what on earth I was doing in Peru, and our common interest in good movies and great literature. It was a pleasant evening after all.

Our arrival in Arequipa went without incident. Maria and I ended up at a hostel, The Tourist House (!), close to the Plaza de Armas. (Little did we know that also staying in the hostel were our future hiking friends Lea, Tabea, and Piotr.) Other than wolfing down a huge chifa lunch, of which Maria ate more of her plate than I did, our Tuesday was mostly uneventful, as we went in search of a good tour to do for the rest of the week.

The next day Maria and I embarked on a three-day trek of Colca Canyon, a long, deep crevice in the Andes that is itself a six-hour bus ride from Arequipa. Depending on which guidebook you read, Colca is considered the deepest or second-deepest canyon in the world. Maria had heard many good things about the trek, and without much else to see or do in Arequipa, the trek seemed the perfect activity for us to do together.

The first day of hiking involved descending the canyon, with our guide, at a brisk pace. About an hour into the hike, my thighs started to ache from all the braking and pivoting they had to do going down the steep path. Surprisingly, this pain didn't become a source of frustration for me. I noted how my legs and torso were working together to balance my body and full backpack on irregular terrain. I realized I was reawakening sinews and joints in my body that had laid dormant in city life. It felt strangely exhilarating to be reminded of my body -- its agility and strength -- in this way.

It was nearing dusk, and after four hours of hiking, Maria and I arrived at a little hut at the very foot of the canyon, near the intersection of two rivers ("Llahuar" in Quechua). Maria and I changed into our bathing suits and spent the early part of the evening relaxing in a freshwater spring. We then enjoyed the meal our guide prepared for us: fresh trout from the river and several cups of the altitude-adjustment tea mate de coca. That first night was tranquil and clear: Llahuar has no electricity, and the skies above it aren't obscured by the pollution one finds in Lima. Before we went to bed, Maria and I stood outside our hut and could make out the universe of stars above us.

The next day began bright and early with Maria and I winding our way east from Llahuar to an "oasis" -- a cluster of huts surrounded by swimming pools, where hikers can rest before embarking on the arduous trek back up the canyon. At the oasis Maria and I met up with hikers who, the previous night, had stayed in the villages east of Llahuar (the trek to which was an hour shorter than ours). So now our hiking group consisted of at least 12 to 15 people. Some folks had to take donkeys back up the canyon; one left two hours in advance to walk up at her own pace; and Maria and I started the ascent with the rest of them.

The first hour of the hike saw our group ascend the rocky, zig-zagging path in intense heat and at a relentless pace, as we all wanted to make it back to the top before sundown. Three of us broke away broke away from the group. For a while, we were directly behind two local children who were wearing worn-out sandals and carrying large travel suitcases on their backs. But their pace, intuited from years of experience and calibrated to their small frames, proved to be too brisk for us. We eventually lost sight of them as they scurried up the sheer face of the canyon with goods to deliver to the village.

Into the second hour, I moved ahead of my hiking buddies and was the first to arrive at an old Andean woman selling snacks, drinks, and fruit at a natural pause in the path. I waited for the others to catch up with me. I asked the woman how much a bottled water costs; when she said S./4, I feigned shock, declared my knowledge of fair prices, and was able to negotiate a S./3 price. Referring to myself as "El Chino" -- my nickname back in Lima -- came in handy once again.

Before moving on to finish the last leg of the hike, the old woman, perhaps charmed by my friendly negotiation, asked our little group what each of our birthdays are. When she came to me, something about September 5 struck a chord with her, and she took out a bag of powder, put some in her hand, and told me to blow on it, out towards the cliff, as hard as I could. Without hesitation, I did that. From what I could piece together with my rudimentary Spanish, I think I may have warded off the rains for at least a little while.

Soon I arrived at the top of the canyon, exhausted and drenched in sweat. My body heaved a sigh of relief as I surveyed the spectacular depth of Colca Canyon. I savored every drop of fresh, cold water that ran down my throat. My now deeply tanned skin reflected the rays of the blazing sun overhead, and I somehow didn't bother to find shelter in the shade. The other hikers trickled up the path over the next hour. We regrouped for the short walk back to Cabanaconde, the lone village with electricity in this vast area.

As the group trudged back to the hostel, I reflected on how profoundly removed I felt from the technologies of mediation that punctuate postmodern society. I realized that the trek allowed me to connect to the earth in a way that questioned the extent of my dependence on electronic mediation in "normal," everyday life. Far away from e-mail, websites, blogging, television, DVDs, iTunes, and so on, I felt free to accept the earthy reality of aching muscles, sweat-stained clothes, and mud-caked sneakers (yes, sneakers: I did say that I left for Arequipa on a whim). The experience made me ask, "How am I being mediated here? Am I at all?"

I'm not a romantic when it comes to the idea of "nature," but I am a romantic when it comes to experience. Colca Canyon was, for me, a defining romantic Experience, following Emerson. It subsumed my body to the laws of nature, the laws of gravity, and the laws of time in a way that sustained my whole being.

As I write this, though, sitting at the dining room table in my apartment in Miraflores, I find myself wondering whether such Experience is possible in my everyday "networked" life. That is: whether such dwelling may be found online. I admit that the vast majority of my electronic intake and communication is of the humdrum, non-Experience sort. Yet, as just one example, writing this entry has not only been a personally meaningful experience -- it's also had the uncanny effect of reminding me of the power of my body to take in the natural world. Writing this on my laptop, then, at home, and using my wireless connection has given me the kind of moment's pause that is perhaps a precondition for what Emerson called Experience.

This might be better illustrated by a coda to my account of hiking Colca Canyon. Relieved, drained, and reconnected after our hike up the canyon walls, our group settled in for a big dinner at the hostel. Around a long table, Maria (FIN), Paul (IRL via ENG), Tabea (GER), Lea (GER), Piotr and his friend (POL via ENG), and Alice (FRA) ate, talked, and argued (about soccer and the movie Babel), the day's journey slowly fading into memory.

When dinner was over, the question of what to do next arose. One thing led to another and bottles of pisco appeared with our names on them. Our hosts graciously cleared away the tables and created a makeshift dance floor. Our local guides then brought out the party-makers: pirated DVDs of '70s and '80s dance music videos, from disco to Milli Vanilli. In the mood for celebration and delighted by the selection of one-hit wonders ("She Drives Me Crazy"), home-country favorites ("99 Luftballoons"), and karaoke-inducing hits ("Superfreak"), the lot of us drank and danced the night away, fixated on a small-screen television, in our hostel, in a small village that was the only beacon of light in the wide expanse of Colca Canyon.